This afternoon, President Trump held an event celebrating the American apparatus of soft ethnic cleansing, praising the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) and the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) for their efforts in “protecting” us.

Trump’s entire speech had not a single mention of the needless cruelty and the distressing abuses these racist agencies have perpetrated against immigrants in their custody, which include murders, rampant sexual abuse, and torturing children.

Instead of addressing their appalling behavior, he spun lurid, fantastical stories about how ICE agents are “liberating” towns in Long Island from his favorite new boogeyman, the gang known as MS-13 that has only 10,000 members and largely preys only on vulnerable minorities but has now been turned into an imaginary national menace in the minds of Trump’s racist followers thanks to his constant lies.

Trump’s racism and xenophobia didn’t stop there. In a truly stunning display, he invited a Latino Border Patrol agent up to discuss a recent operation — and prefaced it by assuring the crowd that he “speaks perfect English” and thus meets his standards of acceptable nonwhiteness.

The implication, of course, is that people who do not speak Perfect English are not fit to hold a law enforcement position or even to be in this country at all, judging by his past statements. Considering that the President spent the entire event praising the CBC (not the CBP) and routinely makes the most basic of spelling and grammar errors in his tweet, he has no grounds to be commenting on anyone’s English.

You don’t have to be a German Shepherd to hear that dog whistle. ICE should absolutely be abolished and everyone who works for it prosecuted — but that doesn’t mean Agent deserves to be subjected to this kind of treatment.